uelty, can possess no other weapon than brute force.

III

It is as if there had never existed either Voltaire, or Montaigne, or
Pascal, or Swift, or Kant, or Spinoza, or hundreds of other writers who
have exposed, with great force, the madness and futility of war, and have
described its cruelty, immorality, and savagery; and, above all, it is as
if there had never existed Jesus and his teaching of human brotherhood
and love of God and of men.

One recalls all this to mind and looks around on what is now taking
place, and one experiences horror less at the abominations of war than at
that which is the most horrible of all horrors--the consciousness of the
impotency of human reason. That which alone distinguishes man from the
animal, that which constitutes his merit--his reason--is found to be an
unnecessary, and not only a useless, but a pernicious addition, which
simply impedes action, like a bridle fallen from a horse's head, and
entangled in his legs and only irritating him.

It is comprehensible that a heathen, a Greek, a Roman, even a mediaeval
Christian, ignorant of the Gospel and blindly believing all the
prescriptions of the Church, might fight and, fighting, pride himself on
his military achievements; but how can a believing Christian, or even a
sceptic, involuntarily permeated by the Christian ideals of human
brotherhood and love which have inspired the works of the philosophers,
moralists, and artists of our time,--how can such take a gun, or stand by
a cannon, and aim at a crowd of his fellow-men, desiring to kill as many
of them as possible?

The Assyrians, Romans, or Greeks might be persuaded that in fighting they
were acting not only according to their conscience, but even fulfilling a
righteous deed. But, whether we wish it or not, we are Christians, and
however Christianity may have been distorted, its general spirit cannot
but lift us to that higher plane of reason whence we can no longer
refrain from feeling with our whole being not only the senselessness and
the cruelty of war, but its complete opposition to all that we regard as
good and right. Therefore, we cannot do as they did, with assurance,
firmness, and peace, and without a consciousness of our criminality,
without the desperate feeling of a murderer, who, having begun to kill
his victim, and feeling in the depths of his soul the guilt of his act,
proceeds to try to stupefy or infuriate himself, t